


The Whirlie Bird

by Todesengel



Series: Steampunk!Seven [16]
Category: Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Gen, Josiah likes things that go boom, Nathan is the only sane man in the insane asylum, Steampunk!Seven
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-30
Updated: 2012-12-30
Packaged: 2017-11-22 22:07:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/614879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Todesengel/pseuds/Todesengel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt: "right, so who's comin' for a spin around town?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Whirlie Bird

The first thing Nathan does when Josiah tells them to meet him behind the church in an hour for his grand unveiling – "it's even better than the iron horse!" – is to corral JD and ask him if he knows anything at all about what Josiah has planned. 

"Well?" Nathan asks again, impatient and snappish. An hour isn't a lot of time to prepare for the inevitable injuries he knows Josiah's latest experiment will cause, and he really can't be having with JD's secrecy. 

"I don't know," JD says, "he ain't told me! He's been real secretive lately, ever since Chris made him scrap the iron horse."

"You're in that damn forge every day," Nathan says. "You tellin' me you ain't got one lick of an idea what he's got up his sleeve?" JD hesitates and Nathan pushes on, says, "You ain't gotta tell me what all it is, JD. Just tell me what I should bring. There gonna be burns? Bullets?" JD purses his lips and Nathan puts one hand over his eyes, rubbing at the throbbing pain that's started up again behind his right eye. "He's gonna be playin' with that lighting jar again, ain't he."

"Honest, Nathan, I can't tell you 'cause I don't know." JD gnaws at his lower lip, then adds, "but I reckon it ain't the lightning 'cause he broke the jar a few days back."

"Well thank God for small blessings," Nathan says, and sighs, already feeling the weight of the kit he's going to have to bring to cover all the possible catastrophes. "Lord, I hope I've got time to scrub down the table."

"You ain't gotta come," JD says, obviously annoyed by Nathan's insistence on dwelling on the almost certain injuries to come. "Not if you're gonna be like that. Shoot, I don't get why the two of you are even friends, you're so down on him all the time. Josiah's a genius! Don't you got no faith in that?"

Nathan grunts and shakes his head. JD's got it all wrong – he truly does enjoy Josiah's company, enjoys their talks of science and faith and burning curiosity. He hasn't ever met a mind like Josiah's and in the quiet evenings, when they're sitting on the church's stoop and smoking cigars and looking at the stars, Nathan wishes there were more men like Josiah out there – that there was more curiosity, more wonder, more honest faith in the majesty of knowledge. Of course it's typically only a day or so later that he ends up having to patch up the latest unintended casualty of Josiah's burning quest for knowledge; and more often than not that casualty is Josiah himself, who even while he's bleeding and singed can't help but tell Nathan how he's sure he's worked out all the kinks and the contraption is going to work perfectly the next time around. 

"Boy, the only thing I have faith in is the fact that given a screwdriver and a set of tongs, Josiah will find a way to make something explode."

JD rolls his eyes and heads off towards the church, a stubborn stiffness to his stride, walking as though he can prove Nathan wrong by force of will alone. Nathan watches him walking and thinks, instead, of how pale JD had gone as he'd looked down at his leg, flayed open when Josiah's iron horse had combusted with JD astride it. JD hadn't been so sure of Josiah's genius then – and he'd been damn happy of Nathan's pessimism then. 

And if Josiah's new contraption is his replacement for the iron horse…

Nathan blanches at the thought and hurries up to his clinic – so much to do and only an hour to do it in. 

*

In the end it's only the knowledge that he can help the most if he's right there when disaster strikes that gets Nathan to leave his clinic – table only halfway scrubbed, pots of unguents in disarray, his spare instruments left in a jumble – and join the rest of them behind the church to see Josiah's latest experiment. The thing is covered in a dirty burlap sack, and while it's much smaller than the iron horse had been, Nathan's learned that with Josiah size really does not matter. He's not the only nervous one, he can tell, and he takes some comfort in the fact that even JD is keeping a healthy distance from whatever is under that cloth. 

"Good! You all came!" Josiah's smile is brilliantly white against his soot-dark face and he smiles upon them all like a proud father at a debutante's ball. "Now, I want you to remember that this is just a working prototype, but I reckon it'll go even faster than the iron horse did."

"The one thing that damn horse was good at was speed," Chris says.

"Yup. I reckon the real problem was the fact that it kept on blowin' up," Buck adds, and Nathan sourly notes that he's the farthest back of them all, well protected from any possible shrapnel by both Vin and Ezra. 

"I've been thinking about that," Josiah begins, "and I reckon—"

"Josiah, just show us the damn thing already so I can tell you no and we can get on with our day," Chris says, cutting him off.

Josiah sighs the sigh of the unappreciated genius and pulls the burlap off his device. His grin broadens and he gestures dramatically at the thing, saying, "ta da!" as he does so.

Despite himself, Nathan takes a step closer, unsure of what exactly he's looking at. It looks like…

Well, it looks like Josiah had welded an old tin tub to a pair of rail tracks, stuck a windmill on the top of a giant wooden screw, and mounted a pair of old copper boilers behind the whole thing. It certainly didn't _look_ dangerous…but it also didn't look like anything that could move.

"Whatch'a callin' it?" JD asks, poking at the metal joins. 

"I call it a Whirlie Bird," Josiah says, and if anything his grin gets even bigger. "It goes up in the air, you see, and this center pole spins and provides lift." He drapes one arm across JD's shoulders and adds, "Now, who's comin' for a spin around town?"


End file.
